From The Daily Show Feb. 23, 2010:

Wyatt Cenac examines Bank of America's hidden credit card fees with a former employee and a mafia loan shark.

From Sen. Chris Dodd--Republicans Block Dodd’s Effort to Immediately Stop Credit Card Rate Hikes:

Senate Republicans blocked Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodds (D-CT) attempt to pass legislation to stop credit card interest rate hikes.

Dodd went to the Senate floor to ask for consent for the Senate to take up and pass his Credit Card Rate Freeze Act, which would prevent credit card companies from hiking interest rates, fees and finance charges on customers existing balances until Credit CARD Act protections take effect in February. Regrettably, Republican Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) objected to Dodds request, blocking the bill from Senate passage.

Consumers obviously have a responsibility to spend within our means and to pay what we owe. We bear that responsibility. But the credit card industry as well has a responsibility to deal with their customers honorably. There is nothing honorable about whats happened with these significant rate increases and fees. Most importantly, they dont have a right to rip off American families, especially when the Congress has already gone on record opposing the very actions they're engaging in, Dodd said on the Senate floor.

Happy Holidays from the GOP.

John Amato:

This is outrageous. The Republicans are actually blocking freezes on credit card rate hikes as the holidays approach us? What would Santa say? Where's the outrage from the Democrats and the Villagers? Will David Broder write a juicy article showing his disdain for the treatment of the American people by republicans? I mean he's the ultimate bipartisan scold. I bet if you asked the teabaggers waiting to see Sarah Palin at a book signing, they would say that it's un-American and Socialist to stop credit card companies from raising their rates. "That's their right as Americans if you support freedom and the Constitution." Maybe Palin will write something about it on her Facebook page for the media to lap up. You know, the Democrats are trying to use death panels on the poor credit card companies in a down economy. That's can't be good, right Katie?

Digby writes:

These people are sticking up for credit card companies who are gouging their customers during the holidays in the middle of a recession! What do they have to do to provoke some outrage from the Democrats, gun down Tiny Tim? (Of course, the Republicans would simply say they were defending their constitutional right to bear arms.)

Honestly, this should provoke a Democratic outcry of epic proportions because it's good policy and it's good politics. They missed the boat by failing to draw attention to the fact that the Republicans blocked the unemployment insurance extension for over a month but this issue is hitting both the employed and the unemployed, all across the country.

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From CNN's Your Money, it looks like the S.E.C. is as feckless as ever with reigning in these crooks. Matt Taibbi has much more over at his blog True/Slant.

ROMANS: All right. This is the ticker where each week we take you beyond the headlines. Shawn Tully is editor at large at Fortune and Matt Taibbi is a contributing editor with Rolling Stone. Let's be blunt, Matt is not a beloved figure on Wall Street these days which stems from articles like the one out in this week's Rolling Stone entitled "Wall Street's Naked Swindle." You can pick it up for all the details.

But let's examine a few of the overall themes. You say Wall Street is designed to rip off the middle class and you make the case that our economy is currently so screwed up, actually that's not the word you use, imagine a word by mistake on "SNL" and that is the word you meant. Screwed up that the rich are running out of things to steal. What's worse is that Matt argues that no one, not the S.E.C., the Federal Reserve, or the Treasury Department is making any real effort to punish the culprits.

For starters, who specifically are the culprits and why aren't they being punished?

MATT TAIBBI, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, ROLLING STONE: Well in the story that I looked specifically at two cases, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and what happened in those companies and what I found is that there was a kind of bear raid that had been happening to smaller firms in years previous to the Bear and Lehman episodes where there was sort of a pattern of credit default swaps.

People who were buying, naked short selling of these stocks, rumors being spread in the media. This was always happening in the smaller companies and hedge funds and predatory, you know, sellers were doing this to small companies.

In this instance, they did it to Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. There was a massive amount of undelivered shares and obvious evidence of naked short selling and manipulation in these instances. It was clear that they had run out of smaller companies to do this to.

ROMANS: So who did it?

TAIBBI: Well that's the problem. We don't know. This data is available to the S.E.C., it is a relatively simple matter to find out who was doing all this naked short selling but they haven't released the data and a year and a half later, they haven't made any progress in an investigation at all.

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